Investing
looking people in the eye — the legacy of working as a field hand, where he and his family members kept a low profile while earning $21 a day for their collective labor. His pastimes range from taking long hikes with his wife, Rosa, to attending Grateful Dead concerts.
“He hasn’t lost perspective of who he is,” said Ronnie Lopez, a former banker and chief of staff under Arizona. Gov. Bruce Babbitt who has known Almanza for a quarter century. “He’s very humble, but don’t confuse humility with weakness.”
Almanza said he enjoys banking, especially the personal interactions.
“The teammates I engage with every day, above and below me — they’re the fun part,” he said, adding that it’s also important and interesting to meet regularly with bank clients and get to know their businesses.
Almanza, who will turn 64 in December, was born in the farming town of Hanford, California, as was his mother. His dad hailed from Glendale, Arizona.
Almanza calls his parents his true heroes. Both had only grade-school educations, but they encouraged him and his two brothers to learn. His dad, who earned a bronze star and purple heart fighting the Japanese in the Aleutian Islands during World War II, was always reading something, Almanza said. “They instilled in us the importance of education.”
He earned both a bachelor’s degree in business and an MBA from Stanford in the 1970s, then followed those with a law degree from Santa Clara University in 1984. His early years in banking focused on agricultural lending, based on his farm experience. That continued for a while even after he moved to Phoenix in 1992, when agriculture in the Valley was more central to the economy.
Almanza said he tries to help others on his team “navigate the bank” and build their careers. “I take the tools (others) taught me and pay that back,” he said. He also understands the importance of a work/life balance, calling that the biggest challenge he faced earlier in his career, when he was working long hours and not spending enough time with his family.
He strikes that balance today, typically arriving at the office by 7:30 in the morning and wrapping up around 6 p.m., with 60 to 90 minutes spent at home each night on bank-related reading. He tries to limit his weekend work obligations to reading and responding to emails.
As a state president, Almanza is among Bank of America’s upper-tier executives nationally. He heads back to corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, about four times a year for meetings. “These are open, candid dialogues about what’s working and not working,” he said.
As the economy recovered from the recession, the bank’s finances stabilized and profitability has soared, with Bank of Americaearning $18 billion over the past four quarters. “Now it’s about achieving operational excellence and delivering for our customers,” he said.
Bank of America still has work to do in that regard. While ranked with Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase among the perennial big three in Arizona, Bank of America has faced more complaints than the other two, according to data compiled and made public by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dating to late 2011.
Over that period, Arizonans filed 1,735 complaints about Bank of America compared with 1,466 for Wells Fargo, 1,197 for Chase and fewer for smaller banks operating in the state. However, Bank of America’s complaints were much higher in 2012 and 2013, having dropped significantly since then. Complaints include those tied to mortgages, checking accounts, credit cards, fees and more.
With $20.7 billion in Arizona deposits, Bank of America ranks third with an 18 percent market share, behind Chase (26.3 percent) and Wells Fargo (25.3 percent), according to the latest FDIC data.
Almanza oversees about 9,000 Bank of America employees in Arizona.
He also sits or has sat on the boards of several local non-profit and community groups, from Greater Phoenix Leadership to the Arizona Community Foundation. During his tenure as state president, the bank has contributed more than $50 million from its foundation to local causes, including those focused around housing, hunger, education and workforce development.
“He has done a lot of great things for this community, a lot of it under the radar,” said Dozer, who sat with Almanza on the regional board of non-profit Teach for America. “He’s passionate, gives his time and personal money, and offers Bank of America’s influence.”
Bank of America has financed much of the development of metro Phoenix over the past quarter century, including loans made to bring the Diamondbacks and Coyotes sports franchises to Arizona, lending on what is now Chase Field, lending to the state of Arizona and loans for the construction of Collier Center, Chandler Fashion Center, Desert Ridge Marketplace, Tempe Marketplace and more. (Some of those loans were made with other financial companies).
“There has been a transformation of the Valley, and we have been involved in getting a lot of that done,” Almanza said.
He actually wears two hats at Bank of America, with the second focused on overseeing business banking in Arizona, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas, for companies generating $5 million to $50 milble lion in annual sales.
Lopez describes Almanza as being equally at ease with corporate leaders and with working-class Arizonans, including those who share his MexicanAmerican roots.
“He has tremendous technical expertise, a world of experience, an open mind and views the world through a pair of brown eyes,” Lopez said. By that, he said Almanza “understands the challenges faced by people trying to make it, trying to become first-time homeowners or secure their first auto loan.”
Outside of work, Almanza is an avid hiker, traversing trails from South Mountain near his home in Ahwatukee Foothills to the Grand Canyon. “Last year, my wife and I went to seven national parks,” he said. “We’ll do 20-mile hikes in a day.”
He also enjoys watching his grandsons play hockey but perhaps the most intriguing of Almanza’s diversions is his passion for music, especially that of the counterculture rockers Grateful Dead. He remembers his first Grateful Dead concert in a rickety auditorium in San Francisco in March 1972 and was hooked.
He said he attended 87 Grateful Dead concerts while lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia was alive and many more after that — Almanza stopped counting after Garcia’s death in 1995.
Almanza also is a huge sports fan, including Stanford football among his passions.
Among dozens of photos in his downtown Phoenix office is a large framed commemoration of the Cardinal’s 2013 Rose Bowl victory over Wisconsin, a game he attended. His 24th-floor Collier Center perch overlooks Chase Field, with views of Camelback Mountain, Sky Harbor International Airport and beyond.
Almanza has been a Stanford seasonticker holder since 1977 and attends most Cardinal home games, where he and his wife sit on the 35-yard line. However, he said he roots for Arizona State over Stanford when those schools play because his two kids (Benito and Katherine) attended ASU.
Almanza still enjoys his work and the interactions with people. “I wish I was 20 years younger,” he said. “This industry, our bank — there will be so much fun, so many things going on.”
If and when he does retire, Almanza envisions buying a second home in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, not far from where he labored on Central Valley farms.
But this time, he won’t be picking walnuts, peaches, cotton, grapes and other crops, as in his youth.
“I’ll probably be sitting on the back porch with a drink, listening to the Grateful Dead,” he said.